TransCanada announced they are abandoning the Energy East pipeline project in light of regulatory issues. The Alberta company, which operates the Keystone XL project cited “changing circumstances” as analysts suggest the company was probably put off by a lengthy review process recently introduced by Canada’s regulatory body.

Although the pipeline made economic sense, said Tim Pickering, chief investment officer at Auspice Capital Advisors in Calgary, “it had regulatory layers put on it.” The project, Energy East, would have converted and extended a natural gas pipeline, forming a link between Alberta’s oil sands and refineries in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. The company had anticipated that some of the bitumen shipped from the oil sands would be loaded onto tankers at ports in eastern Canada for shipment to the United States.